p.s.  Hey.  Yeah, I spent all of yesterday finishing my part in the radio play that Catherine Robbe-Grillet and I are writing, so there's not much re. me to report today.  Oh, 'Work for GV', the soundtrack album of Gisele's and my theater work that I've noted and promo-ed in the blog's upper right hand corner got the spotlight review in the new issue of The Wire, and it's a rave, so we're very happy about that.  I was a little relieved to wake up and notice that the media seems to be all over Sarah Palin's religious fanaticism and the anti-semitism of her church this morning, so here's hoping that blows up gigantically and fatally.  If there's anything else to tell you, I can't remember it at the moment.  **  Roger P., A holiday at a remote village in China sounds awfully nice.  Like a spa without the spa, which was meant to sound good although it probably doesn't sound as good as I intended.  Chill time, I mean.  I think the second version you sent me is A-okay.  I'll write you about all that today.  And thank you a ton, man.  Oh, I like the dancing drawer.  Very subtle.  Though I admit I like the freezer packed full of squirming not-dead dead bodies even more. It's kind of sort of subtle too.  **  Alien, Hi, nice to meet you.  I had a quick read of the Rosie story on your blog, and I like it a lot.  Excellent work.  I'll try to keep my eye on its progress.  Take care, and come back anytime, of course.  **  Erik, Yeah, maybe the weird Ibiza controversy is where I heard of Hendriks, but I think I knew of him before for some reason.  Of course I really like that new thing on your blog.  It's cool.  I'll do the escorts and slaves, and you can do the romantic types.  It's perfect. **  Akkeri, I managed to find some Elliott mp3s yesterday, and I must say I liked them a lot.   Maybe I'll go for 'Song in the Air' first since the term 'stoner rock opus' seems to hit the spot.  I just linked over to have a glance the documentary clips, but Youtube's doing one of its 'maintenance' numbers, so I'll journey over there later.  Yeah, definitely get whatever that internal thing is cut out by all means.  I have this spot/lump thing on the top of my head that I need get removed for the same reason, and which I've been procrastinating about.  Don't be like me.  I think the only US gig of our theater work at the moment is the Seattle shows in early November.  NYC in January is a maybe, and LA is a maybe for sometime in 2009.  You'll just have to come to Europe, which you should.  It's nice here too.  **  DavidC., I wonder if this Lipsynch thing will make it over to Paris.  I guess I can go check for myself.  How is Dominic enjoying the new work situation?  Any luck on selling your place?  **  Stan_cz, Well, I hope you end up being allergic to something relatively unnecessary and not your clothes, for instance, 'cos that sucks.  I'm not having a ton of luck distracting myself from the election, but I have work to do, so I have to try.  Anyway, with signs that Palin is being called on her fanaticism, there's some hope this morning, but the Obama people really have to push now.  It's a very dangerous moment.  **  Mat, Greetings, maestro!  I hope you're good busy.  Busy with what, pray tell?  Yeah, can you believe this Republican shit?  Christ almighty.  Man, it's so very good to see you.  Any time you're free and feel like it, be here, okay?  Lots of love and thoughts of you from me always in any case.  **  Antonio, I can't believe you're Facebook friends with Ross Bleckner.  I don't know why, but that just blows my mind.  I figured you'd know which Neo-Goth was the coke gobbler from hell.  I thought everybody knew.  I thought it was all over the art scene radar.  The Moby Dick thing was kind of a clue, yeah.  You're warm.  Yeah, that pig's blog just had this Celine thing going on that felt kind of aesthetic, but it could be Outsider Art too.  Henry Bowers, hm, I can see it but I can't feel it.  I think I'm not as in the mood for the pre-Misfits quiff thing as you are.  Maybe I'll photoshop a hair-sprayed windswept emo coif on his head and have another look.  But in theory, yeah, I get the godliness.  You're gonna take pictures or video or holograms or something of your party, right?  Would that be too square?  Am I overly deprioritizing the ephemeral to even ask that?  A pet rat, hm.  I had a whole family of rats as a pet when I lived in Amsterdam.  I think I told you that I accidentally scalded them to death.  Maybe that's the answer to your question about the worst thing I've ever done to a friend.  Yeah, I think that qualifies.  Really, about Flash Art?  I don't know.   To me that's the worst art magazine in the world, but I think maybe I know too much about it.  To me it's like the Fox News Channel of art magazines.  But I don't know.  **  David Ehrenstein, Congrats on the Artforum gig.  That makes me really happy.  Sholis is a good guy.  **  Joshposh, Hey, hero!  It's great of you to stop by.  Thanks for mentioning my Duvert post on that heaven on earth that we mortals call Milkboys.  Oh, you can use the Self-Portrait Day idea too.  We can do a big double blog SPD.  No, I didn't know curiousexpeditions.org.  But I just looked at it, and it's pretty cool, so thanks a lot.  I'll probably be stealing stuff from there for here before I know it.  You have a seriously lovely day yourself, Josh.  **  Jose, The main difference is just context.  If you put one of those props yesterday in the rarified white space of a gallery, it'd put Damien Hirst out of business.  Hm, not a bad idea, come to think of it.  Yeah, I totally dream of having a ton of money and collecting those kinds of props and spooky houses and etc. and creating a perfect world somewhere.  Writing that sentence gave me chills.  I'm really glad you liked the Duvert and felt a kinship, and I hope the first day of school reeked with promise.  **  Scunnard, Hey, man!  Where you been?  What've you been up to?  If memory serves, things were a bit on edge last time you were here.  You were thinking of relocating or something, no?  Anyway, hi.  Gosh, that dream about Yury and me was terrifying.  It was positively Palin-esque.  And a little Lynchian, no?  So, yeah, you doing okay?  What's going on?  **  Pisycaca, Halloween is popular in Spain?  I didn't know that.  That's exciting.  The French refuse to embrace Halloween, and it's so sad because the French could do a hell of a Halloween if they wanted to.  I mean, a Marquis de Sade Spooky House.  Imagine it.  I can easily.  Well, when Yury and I finally get back to LA, you'll have to come visit us at Halloween time, okay?  What do you say?  **  Marc, Northern France is totally mysterious even to the French.  They never go there.  They make movies about how weird they imagine it must be.  And it looks like you'll be right on the border of Belgium, which is just a strange country all the way around.  But that might be a French perspective.  That's really depressing about your mom.  My mom voted Republican too, although my siblings and I got her to abstain in the last election.  This stuff scares me shitless.  Voice messages?  Oh, gosh, I'm going to embarrass myself when I reveal that I don't know how to listen to voice messages on my phone.  I know it's easy, but I just can't figure it out.  I guess there must be hundreds of them out in the ether somewhere waiting to be listened to  So if you left me a voice message, I never knew it existed or heard it.  But I was definitely not pissed or anything.  Goodness gracious, no.  Next time send me a text message.  I did manage to figure out how to read them by some miracle.  When are you heading over?  **  Chilly Jay Chill,  Surely, 'Luna's' flopdom had something to do with Bertolucci's distancing himself.  Although my friend said it seemed like more than that.  My friend said it was like pulling teeth to get him to talk about the film at all.  And since it marked the end of the disturbing and, well, great era of his work, clearly there was something else behind his turning on the film.  I honestly don't think Bertolucci has made a really good film since.  I understand what you mean about 'The Sheltering Sky', but generally I think it's pretty terrible, and I don't buy the thinking that 'The Dreamers' was a come back at all.  No, I mean, his really good films are the early ones: 'Conformist', 'Spiders Stratagem', '1900', 'Last Tango', 'Luna', ...  After that, it gets into stylish relative hackdom to me.  **  Steevee, Well, you should probably see a doctor about the urination thing just to be safe.   I've had that issue in the past, but it wasn't anything, just a muscle twinge or something.  Hey, and very cool about the Artforum gig.  The blog gang's world take over is in full swing.  **  JoeM, I guess with 'experimental', it's a matter of degree with people who insist of tagging things.  I always get that tag, but, at the same time, my work isn't nearly as experimental as the really disjunctive, difficult, content- backpedalling  fiction that I tend to read and love most.  When I see the tag experimental, I'm immediately interested, but for most people it's like you said: a warning sign that something need not be read and would not be a pleasure when read.  It's dumb and dismissive.  I'm not sure what it's like at the moment, but it used to be that the 'gay' sections of the big corporate bookstores in the US were basically little erotica sections with a book or two of actual fiction sprinkled in.  It was the bookstores' low rent district.  **  Laurabeth, I'm so sorry to hear that about Zach.  Yeah, of course I remember him.  That's so sad.  Heroin is a beast, an evil entity in my opinion, and it fucks up so many things.  And it pulls you in very quickly, and it's probably beyond his understanding or sense of self at this point.  I really hope he gets through this bad phase okay and quickly.  That's very, very sad to hear.  Ugh. Well, hang in there.  Otherwise, you have a spring in your voice that tells me school is looking pretty good for you this year.  Oh, on the CD question.  Okay, I don't know for absolutely sure, but I'm pretty absolutely sure that the 20 euro price includes the shipping cost.  Check and see, but I think that's the deal.  **  Jesse Hudson, Actually, I think you're better at coercion in your writing that you may think.  Maybe it's partly instinctual.  Your language hides and reveals things in a very sophisticated way.  And you juxtapose images in a way that disorients, and disorientation is the great weapon of writing that seeks to make readers into unwitting spies.  Your writing makes language almost like an alluring aroma, and that's a real gift.  And, yeah, humor is a great tool, as you know.  Anyway, just some writerly respect there from me to you.  'Rent Boy' is terrific, and terrific in the way you said, yeah, I agree with you.  Gary's very good at that.  Exactly, re what you said about the virtues of writing versus with film.  Writing is much more invasive and drug-like.  Film can suggest very effectively but writing actually infects, you know?  A great novel or story or poem is an infection, and it's an infection that can't ever be fully cured.  You can forget things you've seen, but you never fully escape things you've imagined.  The images that writing creates are made of the very material of your life and your experience.  You're filling in every detail yourself.  The writer's imagination and the reader's imagination have an incredibly intimate and fair and balanced relationship.  Without the reader's collaboration, the book is just a rectangle of paper.  Not to overly push the idea that writing's like a drug, but I tend to think of it that way.  It gives you the opportunity and information to create a new experience for yourself, and a book either manages to invade you and work or it doesn't.  I don't know.  I'm rambling a bit.  Talking with you is very inspiring, Jesse.  Interesting you mention 'Blair Witch Project'.  That's the only movie that's actually scared the shit out of me in as long as I can remember.  Mostly with horror movies, I watch them thinking, Oh, that's a cool idea, or, That's something I've never seen before, but 'BWP' really scared me.  I saw it with a bunch of friends, and I remember afterwards we were all freaked out and jabbering at light speed to each other about it for hours and hours.  Anyway, your thoughts on how that film and the other films work is very, very interesting.  I'm definitely going to pick up 'The Room' and read it again.  You've totally sold me.  And Selby's very respected in France, so it shouldn't be hard.  Good torture, and, wow, that honey torture.  I could talk about torture techniques for hours, ha ha, as I did a ton of research when I was working on 'Frisk', but I'd better head off into the rest of the p.s. now  As always, a huge pleasure to compare notes with you, Jesse.  Take care until tomorrow.  **  Heliotrope05, Jesus, Mark.  What the fuck?!  Oh man, I'm so sorry, I don't know what to say. The world can be seriously horrid.  I hope your nephew heals up better than he fears.  They can do incredible things now to fix and hide.  But still, in any case, yeah, I'm just so sorry you all have to go through that kind of viciousness.  Love to you.  **  Bernard, You know, I haven't seen a single thing about this harassment and arrests of protesters and press at the RNC on the news here or online, which is shocking and not shocking of course.  What the hell is going on in the US these days?  I can't tell you how absolutely bewildering it seems and feels from over here.  **  SYpHA_69, I'd totally love to have a post by you about MZR.  That's a perfect idea.  Yeah, absolutely, no question.  It'll be both fascinating in itself, and, if it helps get the word out, then it'd be the blog's honor.  Thanks a lot, man.  **  JW Veldhoen, You know, that's a very interesting idea about you doing more with your face and your body.  You have a very interesting presence, and the form your presence and physicality projects has quite an interesting and even quite mysterious effect that I can't quite pinpoint.  That's not a very clear statement, but ... I don't know.  It's just an interesting thing, and it's striking to me that you've thought about working with that.  I noted it from the first time we met.  Dude, you don't have send me anything, that's really kind.  If you insist anyway, ha ha, yeah, 6 rue de Normandie, 75003 Paris is good until early December.  Thanks, JW.  **  Oliver, Hey.  Oh, the oral biography as fiction idea is freeware.  Anyway, I haven't sorted it yet, so maybe you can help me if you have.  Norway: nice.  Never been there, but the people I've met or befriended here on the blog from there are great.  Just a vacation, then?  I don't know the name of the thing about the uncontrollable muscles around one's mouth.  Is there a condition like that?  It's not an elaborate acting out of nerves?  If so, they say hypnosis helps that kind of thing.  If not, yeah, I don't know.  Is it a real problem you're worried about?  **  Lord_s, I was wondering when I was looking at that site what those posters would look like on a wall.  It seems like a brave move, and that's good.  Bad pro wrestling, yum.  I keep forgetting that there's some cable channel way up in the 400s or something that shows such things here.  When I first got this crazy cable TV thing, I was always searching in the high hundreds, but now I seem to have settled into the 200 and under neighborhood, which is not good.  Excellent about the writing/typing.  Do you really type with one finger?  I do.  I never learned how to type properly.  People always gawk at me when I type.  I'm really fast.  Thanks for your kind thoughts about the visa.  We seriously need them.  It's going to be incredibly difficult for absolutely no logical reason whatsoever, and that drives me fucking crazy.  **  Shai, What'cha going to do about all that beauty, eh?  Oh, you're gonna have a three way with it, are you?  Well, needless to say, that sounds like a nice idea.  Great you got to see a Sue De Beer.  Yeah, she's amazing, right?  You'll have to meet her sometime.  She's an awesome person.  Maybe if the 'Jerk' in NYC thing works out and if you head out for that.  Agreed about Halloween, but, being a vegetarian, it'll have to be with veggie-pig livers which, sadly, aren't quite as scary.  In the post- apocalypse future?  Portland does sound like a green light.  But France can be like a giant Portland wearing a beret if you squint, so it might be a good back up plan.  **  Postitbreakup, Dude, you're fucking top of line, man.  That's what you don't seem to understand.  But being happy with someone isn't easy in any case.  And it sneaks up on you from the weirdest places, especially when one is as smart and original as you.  Maybe you should write more.  I know my romantic life got a whole lot easier after I published books.  It takes some of the effort and meet and greet part out of it.  But you know me, and you're very familiar with my starry eyed advice.  I'm sorry you feel bad, though.  You don't deserve that whatsoever.  **  Alan, Yeah, I don't want to get to into the sci-fi thing because I'm too unschooled in that genre to try my hand, but the idea of a narrative happening in a context where cannibalism is either a phenomenon or widespread practice is something to think about and a way to think that I generally don't.  I tend to be interested in creating hermetic things that only infer a broader context.  So the thinking differently idea is an intriguing one.  Oh, Edward Hibbert, okay.  My agent Ira was with that agency for a long time until early this year, and I know there was complicated deal that was made when he left, so Pallahniuk must have stayed with the agency as part of that.  Oh, is Pallahniuk a strange writer for me to like?  I mean I'm most interested in his first books, and I thought the prose in them had a very interesting shape and taste.  And his interests are not totally opposed to mine, as differently configured as they are.  And I guess I feel like as far as very successful young American novelists go, he's a pretty good prose dispenser relative to the bulk.  But I was more interested in his stuff some years ago than I am now, although I don't really feel anything negative towards his work.  What is it that you particularly don't like about him?  I've heard about that supposedly ultra-shocking story of his, of course.  It really is?  I figured it was just a prank or something.  **  Craig, Hey.  You made me laugh with that thing about French sounding stupid.  I'm the total opposite.  I'll overhear people on the street or in cafes talking, and it sounds to me like they must be saying the most profound and beautiful things, but then French friends will tell me they were talking about Paris Hilton or something.  So, yeah, I'm a massive fan or sucker for the French language.  To me it's like the language God would speak or whatever.  Anyway, yeah, that made me laugh, which is good.  Man, that's super nice of you to want to me send me something.  I mean you don't have to at all.  I mean I'd be pleased, but, you know, that's very kind of you.  I can watch American DVDs on my computer.  Otherwise, it has to be the European code.  But my computer is locked into playing only American format DVDs.  So were you happy or sad or indifferent about Murray beating Mr. Sex on Wheels Nadal?  **  Jax, Yeah, it's the blog and the way I do the blog, i.e. wanting every day to be a surprise and a shift, that's hampering.  So it has fucked with my attention span as well as eating up my time and energy.  But so it goes for now.  I mean there will come a day when I don't want to do this anymore, but I don't know when, and the when doesn't seem imminent.  I'm not sure if I was transitioning away from fiction before I started the blog.  It's hard to tell.  And since my longing to write another novel is unceasing, I'm not sure what kind of transition I'm in exactly.  It's confusing, basically.  I may be drawing parallels between us that don't exist and just projecting, but I do think the fear you have of realizing things is probably 80% fear.  It's what the fear is about that's the question.  Yeah, totally, on the identity thing.  Same deal with me.  But it's to the point where a writer is entirely what I am.  I can't conceive of myself not being a writer.  I'd be bored shitless for one thing.  I have a lot of energy, and I know writing is what I do best.  I know that for sure.  So finding some other way to dispel my energy that didn't involve writing would always seem like second best, and I think that would be extremely depressing.  I think for me at least it's partly that I need to stop being so precious with myself about my writing.  I need to stop requiring a truly great idea of myself before I get into it. That's what I'm doing at the moment.  Maybe I'm imposing standards for myself that aren't relevant anymore, and I need to just do what I feel like doing.  I don't know.  Ring any bells?  **  It's 12:49 by my clock and time to go.  I thought this guy's stuff and ideas up above were interesting, but see what you think.  I think I'll see you tomorrow.  Yeah, I'm sure I will.